UMET - High Pressure On Large Scale Facilities

The expertise of the Earth and Planetary Materials group for the study of materials and minerals under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature relies on mainly two techniques: diamond anvil cell and large volume press experiments, as well as advanced chararcterization techniqes involving X-ray sources at large scale facilities.

See also

Large scale facilities

Large scale research facilities are national or international centers dedicaed to experiments that would not be viable in smaller laboratories. For high pressure reseach, light sources such as synchrotrons are particularly useful as they provide intense and well-focused radiation that can be used for in-situ measurements, while the sample is under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature.

High Pressure devices on large scale facilities

A resistively-heated diamond anvil cell on the P02.2 beamline at PETRA III.

Laser heating system on the P02.2 beamline at PETRA III.

Diamond anvil cells, Paris-Edinburgh, and multi-anvil presses are often installed on dedicated beamlines with the matching measurement, heating, and positioning systems. Those beamlines also provide environements allowing the users to prepare their sample prior to the experiment.

Types of measurements

Deformation measurements on a synchrotron. Radiography and diffraction are used to quantify deformation, stress, and sample texture.

Multigrains diffraction in a diamond anvil cell. In-situ and grain by grain tracking of the evolution of a sample's microstructure.

In our case, we mostly use large scale facilities beamlines producing x-rays with which we perform diffraction, radiography, and tomography. We study the physical properties of our samples, their crystallographic structures, microstructure, or plastic properties.

Sample contributions

In a deformation experiment, the macroscopic deformation applied to the samples is measured using x-ray radiography. The applied stress is estimated using x-ray diffraction by quantifying the measured microscopic elastic strains. The sample texture is evaluated based on variations of diffraction intensities with orientation.

Multigrain diffraction allows tracking individual grains inside a material undergoing dynamic processes such as deformation or phase transformation. One can follow the evolution of the sample microstructure, in-situ and grain by grain. This allows, for instance, decipher transformation mechanisms between minerals.